I migrated to the Android mobile version a few months ago when it was time to replace my aging and vulnerable XP computer, and because I left windows entirely and went with a ChromeBook.
Dealing with the mobile version on a tiny phone screen without a real keyboard was inconvenient, but not fair to blame on the platform itself – those issues are more hardware related. Using my Android tablet has largely solved that issue nicely. Now having used the mobile version for the last few brews, I find that I'm frankly starting to like it. Sorry, but it’s true. I find the menus more intuitive and less confusing. I still have access to the same database tables of malt, hop, yeast, water profile and brew-house profile and it still does all my calculations. I’m not a power user like some others on this thread that use it for managing inventory, pricing etc., so that could be a deal breaker if those are your needs. My use is purely for recipe creation, brew day timers, note taking and sharing recipes and other profiles with friends.
And by the way, I find sharing anything in BeerSmith way faster on my android than on windows – perhaps that’s just be me though. For example, I recently wanted to share a recipe with a brew buddy and it took about 10 seconds to send from my tablet (Open the recipe in “My Recipes” and hit the “copy” button) then another 10 seconds for him to receive it (Locate my recipe in “Find Recipes” and hit “copy”
. No muss no fuss and all done from his back deck over a frothy one. It is just as easy sharing water profiles, specialty malts, hops or yeast, or even equipment profiles.
I recently solve one of my long-standing frustrations with BeerSmith, but curiously thought of the solution on my mobile platform rather than my Windows version. My frustration has always been the software’s inability to solve for FG & ABVs based on my personalized brew equipment and/or fermenting processes. Unlike the ability to calibrate brew-house efficiencies which BeerSmith does very well (our’s is 81%, for example), I’d never figured a way to calibrate attenuation efficiencies (mine have typically been 7% better than the attenuation estimated by the Wyeast or White Lab yeast profiles). Entering in fake brew day readings and post-fermentation FG readings to compute more accurate ABV and attenuation values works, but IMO that’s a lousy way to design a recipe. My crude fix was to create a copy of the yeast I was using (Wyeast 1056 for example) and tamper with the attenuation numbers to match my 7% adjustment, then save as “1056Mod”. So now when I design my recipes, I simply select the modified yeast profile and all my calcs work out great. Rocket science this is not and this could have been done on the windows version just as easily. My point though is that it wasn’t, it was done on Android. And I believe at least part of the reason is that I’m finding the platform comfortable and intuitive.
Just food for thought.